Additional Questions and Answers From the Interview With Linda Darling-Hammond
[abstract]Read Linda Darling-Hammonds responses to questions that werent included in the print edition of the magazine. 
By Jan Umphrey

<H1>Additional Questions and Answers From the Interview With Linda Darling-Hammond</H1>
<P>By Jan Umphrey
These questions and answers were not included in the <a href=http://www.principals.org/pl0909darling-hammond>main text of the interview</a>. You can also hear the full interview as a <*****link to podcast*****>podcast</a>.
<P><B><I>PL:</I></B> What do you see as possible solutions to the inequality and inequity of school funding?
<P><B>Darling-Hammond:</B> Most of the inequality occurs within states because of the failure of state funding systems to make up for the unequal allocation of property values. But theres also huge differences across states, and right now federal funding actually exacerbates those inequalities because it allocates federal funds based on how much states are already spending. I think that theres a role for the federal government to equalize funding across states so that it is targeted to students needs, not to the ability of states to pay. And there is also going to be a need for the federal government to say to states that receive federal funds, we expect you to track opportunity to learn and to show us that you are making progress on equalizing opportunity to learn.
<P>One of the great ironies of the approach to accountability that has been taken under No Child Left Behind and in many states even before thatlooking at only student outcomesis that theres been so little attention to inputs to education and very little expectation that we will expect that governments must supply to children some accountability for ensuring that they have the resources to learn, rather than just expecting the children will be accountable to government for achieving certain test scores.
<P>You have many, many school across this country where children lack textbooks, they lack science materials, they lack libraries, they get no music and art courses, physical education has been eliminated in many cases, lack of qualified teachers. In the poorest districts, teachers earn about 30% less money, and then they have to pay for most of the supplies that their kids will get out of their own pockets, and then we wonder why theres a shortage or a revolving door of teachers in those communities. Which then leads to the hiring of people who are often untrained to teach and kids having little opportunity to learn how to read or do math from people who know how to teach those subjects. So its a revolving door, its a vicious cycle of lack of educational opportunity that gets reified by both the way we enact accountability with no attention to state accountability to children and the way in which we expect outcomes to be managed.
<P>There is also the problem of impoverished curricula, that many, many areas of the curriculum are being reduced in response to the accountability metrics that are being used, and its the great irony of the current situation that the kids who most need the greatest enrichment are the least likely to have an enriched curriculum in their schools. And theyre also least likely to get access to that kind of learning outside of the school. So theres a great deal to be done to turn that situation around.
<P><B><I>PL:</I></B> Can schools begin to solve the problems that you have just outlined?
<P><B>Darling-Hammond:</B>  I think that the education system, and I'm making that a little larger than individual schools, can accomplish a great deal if it adequately provides resources to schools, particularly those that serve the highest need students to be sure that they have, you know, expert teachers and school leaders, adequate materials and supplies and curriculum supports, additional time for students where its needed.
<P>I think schools can do a great deal, but I think its also clear that individual schools, which often dont have those resources, particularly when theyre serving the highest need students in the poorest communities, cannot just by dint of will accomplish everything that we want and need to have accomplished for the kids. I think its also true that it matters whether children have health care, whether they have libraries in their communities, it matters whether they have housing, it matters whether theyre getting fed every day in healthy ways. And to pretend that that doesnt matter is really disingenuous. That is an entitlement for children that we shouldnt wave away by simply saying, Well its an excuse if school people ask the society to step up and provide those basic fundamentals of human existence for the children that they serve.
